Process
by ShatteredLyre
Summary: They don't know that the only reason they exist is so that they can fall in love with each other again and again and again.


**one.**

_razor blades did not  
slash rainbows_

**two.**

The curves of his sighs and the swell of his breaths are much too much for her.

His eyes settle on the small indentation at the base of her neck, the cradle of skin and space that her twin collarbones form with the arc of their descent. Nothing higher. Nothing lower. Just the miniature hollow above her chest. His eyes never stray to meet her own. He asks why her mouth always swings down into sadness and sorrow, maybe bitterness, who knows?

She closes her own eyes so that she doesn't have to see him. "Why does any of this matter?"

**three.**

The sweat and moisture on his skin sticks to her as she peeled herself off of him. She manages to drag herself a foot or two away from him and collapses onto her arms, her small bony back exposed to the warm air of the dark room. She digs her nails into the floor as she feels him trying to reach out to her, to clutch her to his chest in the midst of the afterglow.

"I remember from before…a boy who looks just like you," Anna says, knowing that it would kill off any of the euphoria he was feeling.

The hand that had been on her shoulder drops away and she hears him exhale and turn his own back towards her.

She waits until his breathing fell into a sine, cosine function of waves of stability and predictability, keeping her eyes trained on the packed suitcase, the plane ticket that stuck out of the shirt that laid discarded and forgotten on the floor next to them.

"You said you'd never leave."

**four.**

_hands did not  
steal light from the dawn_

**five.**

She awakes to herself, an empty bed, a sunlit bare room, simple threadbare sheets. And it was as if he had never been there and she would have thought he hadn't been, if not for the outline, the indentation in the mattress his body made and that their movements had made the night before.

She wants to smooth out the mattress so that the invisible weight of his absent body would be erased and everything would go back to had it been before: snow, ice, mountains, abuse, training, shrines, isolation.

She would take all of that, all of the pain continuously. Instead of…Instead of…

Her fists smash down into floor and then she sprints with her throbbing feet to the bathroom to throw up.

"Don't let me feel what it's like to be with someone else and then take it away."

**six.**

If Anna ever died, it would be by asphyxiation, she thinks to herself as fire and pain coursed through her body.

Something tears and blood begins seeping out, staining her thighs, the midwife's hands as the child she had been bearing for the past nine months took its first breath.

She turns her head until her face is completely hidden by the limp pillow, smothering the world from her view, and just cries, her tears and breathy gasps choked off by the layers of cloth and cotton.

**seven.**

_prayers spoken in tongues did not  
dissolve into silk pocket linings_

**eight.**

Anna looks at herself in the mirror, looks at the rough material of the dress as it tries to find some sort of mass to hold onto, some body to cling to before it gave up and hung loosely on her frame.

She winces at her reflection as she feels her hipbone, her rib through the cloth and the very thin skin there.

"It used to fit me once. Back when--"

Her eyes become hooded and she stares at her reflection, that narcissistic, superficial image projected back to her corneas that does not reflect all those intertwined, intermingled inflections and rejections and interjections that make her who she is.

**nine.**

(human)?

**ten.**

Seeing him for the first time since that night was like seeing a skeleton. The marrow of the yellow bones of his clavicle pulsates disgustingly under the sun as she steps into the room. The remains of someone she used to know. It is foreign to her.

He is foreign to her.

He blinks, not too certain if he is seeing her as well and greets her.

"Stop that."

He smiles and waves as if recognizing her.

She frowns and tilts her head down, not able to recognize him for the life of her.

**eleven.**

It is the night from a year and a half ago, replaying itself on an ancient turntable as she lifts herself off of him again, their breaths ragged and panting.

"I remember you, do you remember me?" she asks the wall.

He laughs throatily and says that of course he remembers her. His fingers trace promises on her bare back.

She closes her eyes, tightness blooming in her chest, frustration skittering across her lips. "No, from another life. I remember you from another time."

The fingers trace one last path on her skin before he retracts his hand.

She stands up and leaves the room.

"You didn't smile as much back then."

**twelve.**

_air could be bartered  
for fire_

**thirteen.**

She presses her back against the earth, her hands spread out as if to embrace, to encompass the sky, her legs together, pointing an arrow that extends endlessly southwest. She is crucified to the ground.

He never emerges from the final fight as everyone thought he would. The minutes that the divined time had predicted stretches on until they become hours until they become half a day.

"I killed him."

**fourteen.**

"_How do I know if you're real?" she asks in their house in Japan._

_He tells her that there is no way of knowing._

"_How do I know I can trust you then?" He is leaving for America tomorrow._

_He doesn't answer. He doesn't call after her to stay._

"_Yoh, can I…can I sleep here tonight?"_

**fifteen.**

Her voice is screaming out into the clear, clean silence of the forest, begging the gods to be open to negotiation. She asks if she can barter her own life for his. She deserves to die, not him.

Maybe, after all this time, she was the one who isn't real. That everything in her life, in her existence had been a long, drawn-out lie. And Yoh was the only one who had been nice enough to let her think she was alive.

_Why does any of this matter anymore?_

"It is all a long process," she says to herself over and over again. "What is this all for? Why do I do this? Why do we fall in love just to die, to collapse in on ourselves? We were never here. And yet…"

**sixteen.**

_war could reinvent itself  
as a prayer of silence_

**seventeen.**

Tapping on the table. Sartre. A frown. Organically grown coffee. Crossed legs.

"Hey."

She looks up and her world falls apart and is reassembled in the span of two sevenths of a second. The big bang theory in real time. But she doesn't let him know it. "You sure took your sweet time finding me again."

"You always look so sad whenever I see you." He joins her at the table.

"Why does any of this matter?"

He pauses and then smiles as he sees a picture of their five year old son in her opened wallet. "I suppose it really doesn't."

**one.**

Neither of them knows that they both exist in perfect time, on the perfect wavelength. Neither of them knows that the reason they are born, they live, they die, they are reborn, they live, they die and are reborn again is so that they can fall in love with each other again and again and again in this long, cyclical process.

* * *

**A/N**: DISCLAIMER: I DID NOT WRITE THE POEM IN ITALICS. Jaki Shelton Green did. It's awesome. I don't own it though...

DON'T ASK...because I don't know either. My attempt at capturing Anna's psyche between when Yoh left up until the final fight with Hao up until Funbari no Uta. Since she is a basketcase and all (from the Osorezan arc), Lord knows how she handled being left alone. Also, I've been feeling kinda down lately. Sighz. Review? And check out _Politics 101_ and _Critical Condition_!

**edit: **I really hoped I wouldn't have to do this. But I suppose I must...

Here is a reading guide for those who don't "get" it (because you'd be lying if you said you didn't understand a _single_ thing that's going on. come on now.):

it's NOT supposed to be coherent, it _isn't_ covered in _Shaman King_ since it is a shonen manga and thus it focuses on Yoh and company since they do all the fighting. Why would 10-14 year old boys be interested in reading the effect Yoh's departure had on Anna since, you know, she isn't involved in any BADASS-ness while he's cavorting around in the States. But since I'm not Takei, I wanted to explore Anna's side of the deal while Yoh and friends were going on awesometastic adventures and learning about friendship and stuff like that.

First scene: when they first meet, perhaps it is part of the OSOREZAN ARC, it's up to you really.

Second scene: the night before he leaves for America and they have sex. yes, SEX, that's where Hana came from.

Third scene: the day that Yoh leaves for America, one would assume Anna woke up by herself

Fourth scene: the day Anna gives birth to Hana. one would assume she gave birth in Japan without Yoh. and again, this is where Hana came from.

Fifth scene: Anna looking at herself in a mirror. That's....about it.

Sixth scene: the day Anna and Yoh see each other for the first time since he left for America. one would assume that he has been through a lot with his friends (instead of her) and thus has changed in ways Anna doesn't recognize (don't take the skeleton thing literally. if you haven't noticed yet, this is a very figurative, stream of consciousness piece)

Seventh scene: they have sex. again. also, she keeps bringing up how she remembers Yoh from before or someone like him. this is an _allusion_ to how Hao and Anna are somehow intrinsically linked in their pasts (since she looks just like his mother, etc, et al)

Eighth scene: it is never established what exactly happens after the very final fight with Hao after he resolves his mommy issues. did Yoh emerge immediately after? it is open to interpretation. no one knows if time proceeds the same way it does in normal life as it does wherever the final fight is taking place. it could've been hours and days that they didn't come back and since Anna is very mentally/emotionally fragile because of her past, she might actually come to the conclusion that he's dead (and she played some part in it for encouraging him to become Shaman King, etc, whatever you want to interpret that scene as)

Ninth scene: flashback to the second scene

Tenth scene: same as the eighth scene

Eleventh scene: Anna and Yoh are reunited. since it doesn't explicitly say what happened in between the final fight and Funbari no Uta, no one knows for sure if Yoh immediately rejoined Anna.

The end. oh look, the guide is almost as long as the actual story. good stuff.


End file.
